If you think legislative sausage-making is tedious now, imagine this: a bunch of blowhards on the Senate floor, droning on and on, endlessly debating the chamber’s rules. The position of Senate parliamentarian was created back in 1935 to end that tiresome practice. For decades, the public wasn’t really even aware the parliamentarian existed, but the job suddenly became much more visible in 2001.
Whenever Republicans attain power, they have a sacred religious ceremony: To pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Nearly 25 years ago, when Senate Republicans were trying to muster support for such a plan, the chamber was evenly split, with GOP Vice President Dick Cheney holding the tie-breaking vote. Since there was no chance of avoiding a successful Democratic filibuster, GOP leadership opted to pass the cuts using reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority to approve certain budget and tax bills, but with an important caveat. The parliamentarian must agree that the legislation’s intent and language doesn’t violate the decades-old Byrd Rule. Named after former West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, the rule bans provisions deemed “extraneous” to the federal budget from being included in reconciliation bills.
The GOP Majority Leader at the time, Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, decided to exercise his office’s previously unused authority to fire Parliamentarian Robert Dove when he ruled that some of the provisions in the proposed bill violated the Byrd Rule. Although Dove’s firing caused quite a stir at the time, Republicans managed to get their beloved tax cuts.
Since then, both parties have increasingly relied on the reconciliation process to circumvent narrow Senate majorities. While calls to fire the parliamentarian have been raised by both parties after negative rulings, Lott remains the only majority leader to actually do it.
When Democrats called to replace her after she ruled against them during the Biden years, Republicans clutched their pearls at the apparent disrespect their colleagues were showing the sacred Byrd Rule.
The current parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, was appointed in 2012 by then-Democratic Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. MacDonough has served during the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, and along the way she has ruled in favor of and against both parties in their reconciliation battles. When Democrats called to replace her after she ruled against them during the Biden years, Republicans clutched their pearls at the apparent disrespect their colleagues were showing the sacred Byrd Rule.
Now, their leader’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — as President Trump fatuously insisted it be named by Republicans — has been submitted to the parliamentarian, and quite a bit of it has not passed muster. Their ritual tax cuts seem to be fine; reconciliation is designed to accommodate tax policy. But many of their spending reductions, which are supposed to offset the tax cuts, simply don’t fit the definition, MacDonough has ruled. And many Republicans are furious.
The list of provisions that have been deemed out of bounds by the parliamentarian is long. MacDonough has said no to the GOP’s prized initiatives slashing Medicaid and Medicare coverage for unauthorized immigrants, limiting state provider taxes, banning transgender care from all federal healthcare programs and cutting food stamp benefits. She has given a thumbs down to defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and plans that would have forced the sale of massive tracts of pristine public land to private developers and interfered with the judiciary’s ability to function. In all, she has rejected more than two dozen provisions.
This leaves the GOP having to pass all these proposals via individual bills, or a big omnibus bill, both of which would require 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. Unless they are prepared to nuke the filibuster, these proposals are dead.
The smarter Republican senators know that most of these cuts are electorally toxic. For all the rending of garments over the “unelected bureaucrat” parliamentarian usurping their God-given mandate, a good many of them will be relieved.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said repeatedly this week that he’s not going to overrule MacDonough, nor is he going to follow Lott’s example and fire her. But for all of Thune’s assurances of respect for Senate rules and traditions, it’s certainly possible he will do so anyway. For no apparent reason, Trump is breathing down the majority leader’s neck to get the bill passed by July 4. The right flank of Thune’s caucus is upset at losing some of their prized provisions. For his part, Thune had pushed hard to split these priorities into two or more bills, but Trump wasn’t having it. He demanded his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and Republicans on Capitol Hill had no choice but to acquiesce.
“These are speed bumps along the way, we anticipated those and so we have contingency plans,” Thune said. “Obviously, you have to adjust the timing and schedule a little bit, but we’re moving forward.”
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The biggest issue now confronting Republicans is the gigantic pot of money — hundreds of billions of dollars — they were expecting to generate from their plan to cap the ability of states to collect more federal Medicaid funding via health care provider taxes. Thune said Republican leaders knew “it was going to be an interesting conversation” with the parliamentarian over that provision, which suggests they knew it likely wouldn’t qualify. But they had to appease the hardliners by trying.
All this will leave the deficit in even worse shape. The tax cuts will explode the deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But let’s face it: That ship has long since sailed. Republicans really don’t care. Sure, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and some of the House Freedom Caucus members will put up a fuss. But there’s almost no chance they won’t cave in the end to pass their precious tax cuts.
As usual, billionaires will get their treats and average people will lose. But if Thune and his deputies in Senate leadership can hold fast and let the parliamentarian’s rulings stand, at least the bill will be marginally less horrific. These days, that’s about the best we can hope for.
